Meet the guardians of Mumbai’s Rani Bagh

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What makes an ideal vacation bag? The foundation, set up as a public charitable trust, has been protecting and preserving this space, and ensuring it remains open to everyone, for 17 years. Since every visitor would not know the names of all the plants, the foundation has planned to introduce ebooks and conducts regular tree-cum-heritage walks to introduce visitors to special specimens as well as to unique heritage structures.

Even before Mumbai got its iconic Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or the Victorian Gothic edifice of the high court, Rani Bagh was already welcoming visitors. Its beginnings can be traced to a botanical garden in Sewri, which was relocated to Byculla, as the land that it had occupied was acquired to create a burial ground for European officers and aristocrats.

The new, expansive botanical garden was officially opened by Lady Catherine Frere, wife of Henry Bartle Frere, then governor of Bombay, on 19 November 1862, making it one of the oldest public gardens in the city. In 1890, 15 more acres were added to establish a zoo.

In 2007, Rani Bagh’s existence seemed to be threatened when the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation decided to expand the existing zoo, and create a larger one on “international standards" with open enclosures, night safaris and fine-dining restaurants. Residents feared that the envisaged redevelopment would endanger the biodiversity of the garden and that an increase in the ticket cost would deny access to citizens from every stratum of society.